Preliminary sonification of ENSO using traditional Javanese gamelan scales
🤖 AI Summary
This study investigates how non-verbal audio can effectively represent the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO)—a low-dimensional chaotic climate system—while preserving its dynamical characteristics within a cultural context. Using the Niño 3.4 sea surface temperature anomaly index from 1870 to 2024, the data were mapped onto Javanese gamelan scales (pelog and slendro) and rendered into sonifications through four compositional strategies. The resulting trajectories were analyzed in a two-dimensional acoustic phase space. The work introduces an innovative evaluation framework for sonification, integrating phase-space geometry, recurrence structures, convex hull morphology, and spectral energy coupling. Findings demonstrate that alternating patterns successfully reproduce ENSO’s quasi-periodicity, polyphonic layering expands phase-space coverage, and pelog and slendro scales exhibit anti-phase and near-independent coupling behaviors, respectively, thereby validating the capacity of sonification to retain essential dynamical features of the climate system.
Application Category
📝 Abstract
Sonification -- the mapping of data to non-speech audio -- offers an underexplored channel for representing complex dynamical systems. We treat El Ni\~{n}o-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a canonical example of low-dimensional climate chaos, as a test case for culturally-situated sonification evaluated through complex systems diagnostics. Using parameter-mapping sonification of the Ni\~{n}o 3.4 sea surface temperature anomaly index (1870--2024), we encode ENSO variability into two traditional Javanese gamelan pentatonic systems (pelog and slendro) across four composition strategies, then analyze the resulting audio as trajectories in a two-dimensional acoustic phase space. Recurrence-based diagnostics, convex hull geometry, and coupling analysis reveal that the sonification pipeline preserves key dynamical signatures: alternating modes produce the highest trajectory recurrence rates, echoing ENSO's quasi-periodicity; layered polyphonic modes explore the broadest phase space regions; and the two scale families induce qualitatively distinct coupling regimes between spectral brightness and energy -- predominantly anti-phase in pelog but near-independent in slendro. Phase space trajectory analysis provides a rigorous geometric framework for comparing sonification designs within a complex systems context. Perceptual validation remains necessary; we contribute the dynamical systems methodology for evaluating such mappings.
Problem
Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.
sonification
ENSO
dynamical systems
gamelan
phase space
Innovation
Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.
sonification
El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO)
gamelan scales
dynamical systems diagnostics
acoustic phase space
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